


old as hell and farther

by I_See_Fire



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Remembers, F/M, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Pre-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, in which bucky figures out who he is, in which civil war never happened
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-28
Updated: 2016-09-28
Packaged: 2018-08-18 10:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8158754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/I_See_Fire/pseuds/I_See_Fire
Summary: Bucky Barnes has been searching for a long, long time. This is the story of how he lost himself, and then found himself again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, everyone! Thank you so much for taking a look at this :) I don't know if there's anything triggering in here, but if there is, please let me know. This story starts after Bucky's fall, and ends when he finds Steve again.

_"Tell me about what happened?"_

Pain came first. He feels off balance, too light on his left with nothing to hold him down. Everything is hazy, and he can barely see two inches in front of him. It's cold--freezing cold, and he doubts he could move if he tried. But he was moving. Someone was dragging him. Who? He tries to turn his head and blacks out, leaving pain and cold behind. 

He's not quite awake. Everything is dark and he can't see but he can still feel but all he can feel is burning searing pain and all he can hear is metal against bone. 

Shaking and shuddering and then silence. 

When he wakes up again, he is lying down. The room is cold still, but it is a dry cold, a cold that gives shivers but is slower to sink down to his bones. His left is heavy now--he feels weighed down, like he won't be able to get up ever again. He is restrained, too, he can't move from the bed. Everything still hurts. It's too bright--people are staring at him and he feels his breathing speed up, chest heaving and aching with each movement. Where is he? Who are they? 

Steve, he has to get back, he thinks he's dead...

Panicking ain't gonna help, Barnes, he tells himself. How bad are his injuries? Broken ribs, definitely, something felt crushed in there after that fall... Or at least they had been broken. How long has been out? He tries to raise his arms, and something is different about the left. It's heavy, and it's shiny, and--is it made of _metal_? 

A person in a lab coat comes over and defensive instincts kick in. He reaches up with lightning fast reflexes--he was fast but he wasn't that fast what's happening--and grabs the man's throat, crushing it. The scientist drops but he doesn't pay any attention, he has to get out what did they do to him what's going on--

He rips free of the restraints and white coats converge and then everything goes dark again. 

So much for that escape attempt. 

He wakes up to a chair. Soon, he will come to know it as the Chair, one of two constants. He is restrained again, the bonds are thicker, he can feel it. He strains against them, he has to get out--he's hooked up to something, he can't move. Something holds his head still and there's something in his mouth. He runs his tongue over it. It's rough and leathery and he tries to spit it out but he can't _move_ dang it.

He tears his gaze from the ceiling tiles, trying to look around the room. He can't see much, metal envelops his vision and then there is nothing but pain _pain **pain**_ and he's shaking and he thinks he can see Steve, big and beautiful and golden, coming for him and he reaches for him--

But he can't move and there is nothing but darkness and his attempt to speak Steve's name is muffled and choked and barely makes it out of his vocal chords before his eyes slip shut and there is nothing. 

_longing seeps into his bones even this early and he gets used to it_

He wakes up an it, with a blank mind and nothing but exhaustion and confusion to keep it company. What is its name? It doesn't know. 

It is in a compartment made of metal, it feels like a coffin. It is cold and it can see people outside. It reaches for them and finds glass instead. Then, ice covers the glass and it is completely alone. 

It wakes up again to another chair. It doesn't recognize the people that are talking to it. They tell it that it is the Winter Soldier, and that they need it to help them. 

It gains a reputation for offing HYDRA doctors. It's their fault. They shouldn't get too close. 

It goes and does their dirty work without question. In and out, blood staining walls and its shiny arm. There is a man, then. He introduces himself as Karpov, and promises that it can trust him. He will take care of it, if it will help him. 

It agrees. 

He calls it Asset. It responds positively. He caresses its jaw with gentle fingers and fulfils his promise when newfound handlers push it around. He keeps it safe. 

It thinks it might be a little in love, but it is not supposed to feel affection. Affection is weakness, and so it will gaze at him with glacier eyes and look away when he looks towards it.

Bucky starts to gain some sort of awareness--and then it is brought back to the base and to the Chair and electricity runs through it and it feels like dying and wishes it could die. 

The Cold is yellow this time, and he’s aware, aware, aware throughout the whole thing, standing stock still as wires are connected to him and tubes are put down his throat and into his nose and he can’t _breathe_ but then everything is cold and he thinks of warm arms and shaky heartbeats and is comforted before he sleeps. 

He wakes up. He is given instructions, told to memorize long passages about people. It recognizes one of them--Steve Rogers. It feels warm when it sees him. Warmer than with Karpov. Warmer than those moments right after being removed from the Cold. Who is he? 

He's dead. 

And the Bucky buried deep within it rips free and sobs and screams that they're lying and they play the recording of his death and Bucky can't do it he can't listen they have to be lying his Steve was supposed to _live_

Karpov looks disappointed with him. Bucky spits in his face and Karpov recites a string of words that make him go cold and curl in on himself. _Soldat?_

It goes into the chair without a fight.

Wipe, cold, wake up. 

_he is rusted by now rusted already, there is salt in the air and he’s tired, so tired_

More instructions. Another murder on its hands. Who was the target? It doesn't know. It doesn't matter. The people in charge of it are happy because it's helping the world. It doesn't really care about the world. Something is missing from it but it doesn't know what and so it must not matter any more. 

Karpov is happy with it. Karpov is kind to it. Sometimes, he sneaks it candy. It gazes at him, and thinks of this man as a little spot of light. It obeys what he says, because he protects it. It likes to think of them as a team. 

Bucky is aware again and fighting for consciousness but all they have to do is force him to listen to Steve crashing into the arctic and he's broken and grieving at the top of his lungs--

Wipe. Cold. Wake up. 

Wash, rinse, repeat. 

It doesn't sleep, it doesn't need to. Sleep is unnecessary, especially when it is tracking its prey. No forests for this hunter, though, buildings and bright lights are its haunt but they don't deter it, it knows how to hide. It has been programmed to melt into the shadows. It delivers a single shot and the mission crumples. 

It returns to the base for more instructions. It is ready to comply. Karpov is proud of him. 

_stevie’s hands were a furnace and it is always so cold these days_

Time passes. It doesn't know how much. It's time is filled with orders and memorizing and programming. It is hooked up to the Chair but not hurt. It watches in detached fascination as things are pumped into its system. 

Bucky wakes up twice in that time. The first time, he is easily shut down by the recording. The second, he is physically subdued and the recording is played on repeat--he is forced to stay awake with eyes wide with horror and tears on his cheeks as they show him videos of Steve ramming into the ice and force him to listen to "I won't make it out" and the terrible cut in his words as the plane hit the ice and Steve died all alone in the arctic without Bucky by his side. 

After that, Bucky is smothered with drugs and cold and he doesn't wake up again. The Soldier doesn't know if he's hiding or is gone completely. The Soldier won't disappear, it can't, it has orders to follow and commands to complete and blood to shed. 

The Soldier is all that is left before long, and Bucky never returns. 

_daybreak may never come again and he can’t say he’s surprised_

Karpov has satisfaction in his eyes and crow’s feet around them. There is a new initiative, they tell it. Soon, it will not be alone. They find men and women, strong ones. It doesn’t like them. They are big and burly and ready to fight at any chance. One tries to hit it, and it sends them flying into a wall. 

Oops.

Their screams ring throughout the hallways when they are injected and changed and Karpov uses the words to send it into compliance when he finds it curled in a corner, hands covering its ears to shut those sounds out.

They tell it to fight those new Soldiers when they are finally removed from the rooms. It is jealous of them. It doesn’t want Karpov to look at them with pride in his eyes. And so it attacks them. The man beats it, but he has no control. None of them have any control. The second it is thrown into the wall, something snaps in them all. They kill each other and the handlers locked in there. Karpov holds tight to its shoulder and it protects him like Karpov protected it. It gets him out of there even as blood stains the tile. They leave the screams behind. Karpov tells it that it will be the only Soldier. It is the greatest Asset they could have ever wished for. It is perfection. It will shape the world. 

It believes him. 

Soon enough, the Soldier is lent to the Red Room. It has been programmed to destroy, to fight and fight and not die never die. They tell it to teach the girls the same thing. It is told to kill the ones that don't cooperate. 

Twenty eight are left by the end. The Soldier trains them. They learn to fight and fight and destroy. Its handlers are proud of it. Karpov would be proud of him. It thinks it misses him, sometimes. 

There is one ballerina, and her name is Natalia. She says that she chose it herself. She watches it, she gazes at it the same way it looks at Karpov. It feels its heart warm in a familiar way. She teaches it how to dance along with her companions. They giggle, and she watches him with those too-old eyes. She kisses it, eventually, before they’re sent to bed. She pulls back, and tells it that she won’t apologize. It kisses her, then, and cuts off her last word. 

They are happy, for a little. It teases her about her bangs. She braids its hair. They are comfortable. They are peaceful. But it does not love her, not the way that she loves it. She calls it Asset. It asks her to call it Yasha. She does, and he hugs her tight for it. But her hair is not floppy and blonde. Her eyes are not the comforting blue they should be. And it cannot stay with her forever. It apologizes and kisses her and she cries but she understands, of course she understands, she loves it and because she loves it she will let it go. 

It goes to watch one of her shows. It refuses to go back to the base afterward, and it knows that it is dark enough that it could leave and just slip into the night. 

And so it does, with a mouthed apology to Karpov and to Natalia.

It wanders Russia for a month. It tries to remember things, but there is little that it can find, and nothing to trigger more. Sometimes, the world melts away and it wakes up miles away with nothing but hands stained red and gaping holes where it's memories should be. But there are little things, familiar faces and scents that bring back things from many years ago. 

It can't hide forever. It should have known that. They come for it and it tries to fight them off, no, they can't take it back it was almost free it was so close--

And a word is spoken and it crumples to the ground. 

_for a moment, he was that seventeen year old kid from brooklyn again_

Wipe, cold, wake up. 

It is sent to another base, and it kills more people. It's a ghost, in and out and leaving naught but legends and corpses in its wake. It kills and kills as its handler's command and it does not take joy in it--but there is a satisfaction. 

It is helping the world. It's work is _important_. 

It is told that Karpov is gone, and it cries when it learns that he will not be coming back. There is a new man, one who calls himself Pierce. His hand is harsh and his eyes are sharp. He doesn’t know the words to turn it cold. He hits it and wipes it and looks at it with hungry eyes and then speaks kind words to it about changing centuries and shaping worlds and it just wants to lay down and sleep but it is caught; caught in a terrible in between where it cannot control its actions but it cannot stop moving. 

Purple bruises bloom across his shoulders and cheeks and back and they can’t heal fast enough. Pierce thinks it is misbehaving. It doesn’t know what it is doing. It clings to the Mission it is given, in hopes of grounding itself. Pierce looks at it like he wants to eat it. It huddles in a corner and covers its ears and when someone tries to drag it from his spot, it rips their throat out with its left hand. 

It is punished. Its brain is put through a blender and its wounds heal. There’s a new man. He calls himself Rumlow. He looks at it like he wants to wrap his hand around its neck and _squeeze_ even as he kisses its breath away. 

It avoids Rumlow. It tries to look less vulnerable and more scary. It builds a shell around itself. It is sent on missions. It is a comfort, to be gone. 

"What are you?" A bullseye screams before it breaks her neck. 

It doesn't know. It can't seem to care anymore. 

_he is not benign but that's one of the words they use to put him under and he wants to scream that he’s anything but good that he will not listen but he will comply he will comply he must **comply**_

_****_

## _**soldat?**_

_**bucky?** _

It returns from a mission to a little girl in his space. She has white-blonde hair and it is tempted to pick her up by the scruff of her neck and deposit her elsewhere. She introduces herself as Cecilia. It gives her a mistrustful look and doesn’t talk to her. 

That is, until she punches one of his handlers for mistreating another and her high pitched voice echoes down the corridors as she is carried away. Her actions strike a chord deep inside of it, where it knew that its heartstrings no longer could be tuned. For a moment, thoughts of blue eyes and blonde hair and bloody noses fill its mind. Then, they are gone, and it is left with nothing but the desperate need to protect this person that resembles the person it’s forgotten and wants so badly to remember. 

She has a metal arm and a metal leg. It adopts her, protects her from the cold and from the handlers. It teaches her to care for the plates of her limbs, it teaches her to survive down there. It gives her all the knowledge it can, and perhaps she will eventually find its long forgotten beloved and tell him everything. She calls it Asset. It calls her Zvezdochka, for Solnishka is taken by the true light of its life, the sun that it lost and can no longer recall.

It helps her escape Hydra’s grasp. It is punished and beaten bloody. But the little star is safe and its wounds heal.

It is given the chance to redeem itself, almost. Almost. For nothing can truly redeem this monster, this soulless thing that feels too much to be soulless. It shoots a car’s tires out. Sends it over a cliff. Following, it sees a woman with curly red hair and she calls it Yasha and begs it to come home as the scientist that she is protecting stumbles away. 

It shoots him, right through her. She gasps and crumples like a piece of paper in its fist and it goes to finish its Mission. It goes to the scientist, and points its gun at his head. Its hands are steady, and goggles cover his eyes. The scientist speaks with his final breaths, begs it to hide the camera from Hydra. It was to find Captain America, he says. He calls the Captain... Steve. It is taken off guard and shoots him anyway. He dies silently. 

It blinks, and it is at a train station. Had it fled? There is a man with white hair and a mustache standing across from him. He calls it Barnes. He calls it Sergeant. He calls it friend. It is Bucky that presses the camera into his hands. It is Bucky that begs him to find Steve, to save him. Bucky ruffles the dark locks of the boy that stands next to Timothy Dugan, and thinks that he knows those eyes. 

He goes back to the base. He tells them that the device had been destroyed along with the car. 

He is beaten. Its scars heal. 

Years pass, but it has no sense of time. The Cold and the Chair are the only constants. Sometimes they look different. They always hurt.

Until the Man on the Bridge. 

It knows him. He looked at it with wonder and confusion and hope in his eyes, a look that it recognizes from somewhere long ago. It says something other than mission reports for the first time in decades to communicate that, eyes not as blank as they are supposed to be, as it means them to be. 

It is important. It is _needed_. And its handlers can't let things be ruined. Pierce tells it that they need to fix things still. They are not complete. It understands his reasoning. It has long since learned not to fight when it is wiped. But it can still _feel_ , and it still feels sad. It is so close, it can almost feel it, and the words "wipe and start over" carry a different weight. It can remember, even the barest scene is more than enough, but it can't keep it. 

It can't keep anything. It is resigned to that fate. 

So when the leather is stuck in its mouth and the ages old anticipation of its brain being torn apart makes its chest heave, it doesn't fight, and the memories slip away as quickly as they came. Pierce and Rumlow watch on. It doesn’t remember their names when it wakes again.

_when he was nine he broke his arm and two days before he turned ninety six he forgot again_

This time, it is sent out again a day later. A tactical error on their part. 

It does not kill the Man on the Bridge. It wants to, it wants to kill him, to show him that it isn't his Bucky and what kind of a name is Buchanan anyway and he is its _mission_ not its friend. It tries to hold to what it has been told--it is helping, it is doing good, it is _important_

But somehow, the Man on the Bridge is more important than it is. 

It can't let him die. Not again. 

Against its better judgement, as the Man on the Bridge falls off of the bridge, it saves him. 

It shoves the water from his lungs and forces him to remember how to breathe. It waits for a moment, running cold fingers through waterlogged hair and singing a few words to a song it doesn't know anymore. Then it leaves the Man on the Bridge behind, and doesn't look back. It has things to do and it can't afford to have him following it. But he will. The words "stubborn punk" come to mind. 

The layers and layers of Cold and Chair that Bucky is hidden under are beginning to be chipped away and it feels like he’s coming home at last, despite Home being miles away and in a hospital room.

It never returns to the base, it knows what would happen if it did. It will never be frozen again. It will never be looked at with hungry eyes again, because now it knows what it is like to be looked at with love rather than lust. 

Instead, it takes stock of its questions, and tries to find answers. 

What exactly _is_ a Bucky? 

The name is familiar. It used to be a Bucky, once upon a time. But the kernel of Bucky is gone, or it had been, buried with drugs and cold and his Stevie's death. 

But the Man on the Bridge is no longer dead, and neither is Bucky. 

Could it be a Bucky again? 

Its mission changes. It has to protect itself and the Man on the Bridge. 

It hides, in hopes of stalling for time. Its handlers don't know it has gone rogue and if they found out, they would steal all of its fuzzy, brand new memories and it would not could not let that happen. They would take it and wipe it and then make him go after the Man on the Bridge. So it stays in the shadows, like it is programmed to. 

The decades of drugs in its system wear off slowly, and it shivers and shakes and vomits in a dark room for weeks as the withdrawal wracks his body. Loud sounds have it going for weapons. It avoids people. 

Then, it is found, and there are people with shackles in their hands and promises of home on their lips. 

It remembers what home is now, and home is not orders and Chairs. Home is a pair of warm arms reaching around it, a deep voice rattling its bones early in the morning and making it laugh when he kisses it's neck. Home is both shorter and taller than it and it misses him so, so badly but it can’t go home. Not to their home. Not to its home. 

They pull out a red book with a star on the front, and start to read a string of words. _Сильное желание, Проржавевший, Семнадцать, Рассвет, Печь..._ Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak. Furnace. It kills them before they can finish the sequence, it tears their shackles apart. It is never going back to what they thought was home. Neither would they. It takes the book and hides it. It cannot burn it, it cannot force itself to burn the book that contains the half of its mind that it cannot control.

It knows more will follow soon. They are coming for it. 

Instead, it goes after them. 

They had built it and now it is tearing them apart, decades of cold giving way to hot anger. It has spent too long being wiped and used. It fights with a terrible desperation--and a determination that they will never take it alive. 

What it had been doing had not helped the world. What he is doing now would. 

Rumor spreads, and it continues its path of destruction. Eventually, it leads back to DC. There, it becomes a he again. He watches the exhibit, looks at the images of his face. Who was Bucky Barnes? And what is he now? He looks up his name on howmanyofme.com. He is the only one with it.

He adopts that last name to start with. Bucky belongs to someone different, and it belongs to Steve. 

Being an individual is exhilarating. It--he had not had the concept of I in decades. He is a _person_ and it is amazing. He feels almost like singing, but he can't remember the words to any songs. So he hums instead. 

His days of killing do not end when he leaves HYDRA. Instead, they continue and almost increase. They had made him into the perfect weapon, and they did not hold the trigger any longer. Without the Cold and the Chair, there is nothing to hold him back. 

He finds himself in New York once more, and learns that the Avengers are gone, saving some place called Sokovia. It’s on the news, and he sees Steve and he presses his hand to the glass of the store window that holds the television and stays there until someone comes and looks at him with sympathetic eyes and offers to buy him a meal. He accepts. It’s the best sandwich he’s had in seventy years, and he nearly cries at the taste. 

He hangs around for a little while. Eats candy and gets caramel stuck between his teeth and learns to play the drums from someone on the side of the road. He marvels over the prices of this new age. He reads the newspapers. _The hero who lost everything._ He burns that magazine with a lighter he found abandoned. He feels satisfied. 

When everything is warm save for him, he knocks on someone’s door and asks to borrow their kitchen. The girl with thick, black hair that answers lets him in. He’s brought his own ingredients, and they make conversation in Russian. She criticizes his choice in supplies, saying that he could get them for far cheaper. He laughs. Everything’s expensive those days, he tells her. She’s come a long way. So has he. He makes a heart out of strawberries on the icing of the cake and thanks her. She helps him put it on a paper plate, and he leave it on Captain America’s windowsill. He thinks he can hear him crying as he disappears into the night. 

He goes to Dublin, Ireland, and he cries at the green he sees and the language he catches snatches of because the man he loves is in every rolling hill and every spoken word. He finds himself in San Francisco, Shanghai, Kobe, Johannesburg. He travels. He buys a “smartphone” from a nice man that writes his phone number on the back of the receipt. He takes pictures of himself. Selfies? He likes them. Isn’t there some idea, that on the quantum level, someone only exists if they’re being observed? He feels like these solidify the fact that he exists. He still feels separated from the man standing before the reaching arms of Christ the Redeemer, but he doesn’t delete a single photo.

He gets really good at Flappy Bird. 

Sometimes, he thinks about tossing his left arm to the side of the road, but knows better than to give up his best weapon. It's useful, strong, and the whirring is strangely soothing. It is his and his alone, and so he keeps it. He finds a Sharpie and sandpaper, though, and scratches the gleaming star away. It is _his_ arm, not HYDRA's. He washes his hands of the red paint and moves forward. 

Maybe it was able to forget the stream of target after target, but he cannot. He writes down every single name he remembers, which is all of them. They all came early, as if to haunt him. He tries to befriend his ghosts. He doesn't know if it works. 

He settles in Bucharest and loses track of time again. He rents an apartment from a kind old man who gives him a discount. He stocks it with guns and comfort food and cinder blocks and prepares to defend himself. He needs to, sometimes, but it seems like the world had moved on from him. It's a relief. 

He doesn’t need to sleep or eat, but he enjoys both, and he finds ways to fill the seconds ticking by. He goes to a ballroom dancing class advertised on a brick wall. A girl with dark hair giggles as he spins her. He finds odd jobs, cleaning an old lady’s house and carrying crates. No one questions his strength. They call him Yasha, they call him James and they laugh good naturedly. It takes him a while to get used to their slapping him on the back. 

More of his handlers come and try to take him back, but he refuses to go because he is his own now and he will never belong to them again. He disposes of their bodies quickly and cleanly.

He buys apples. He likes the green ones. They’re a little tart, but the sensation on his tongue draws him in. Salt and vinegar chips quickly become his favorite. Cheetos make him almost laugh when he licks the orange dust from his metal fingers. He learns that he likes zucchini bread, he will eat cucumbers like a banana, and that chocolate is his favorite food. He eats too much ice cream and vomits it all up on the side of the road. Then, he eats more. It’s a vicious cycle, but even having the luxury of throwing up food... He never thought he’d be grateful to vomit. 

He is not quite Bucky, but he is almost a person, and that is enough for him. 

He likes color. He likes plums, for their dark purple. He likes pears, and he eats bananas like he’s contemplating the universe, despite their not tasting like they’re supposed to. He collects the wrappers from Dove chocolates, because they’re sweet and there’s so little that’s sweet in his life. “You have a great laugh,” They tell him. “Surround yourself with love.” He tries. He buys a sleeping bag with a plaid inside. He grows a beard, and then shaves it all off, unused to having hair on his face. He wakes up with tears in his eyes, the echoes of laughter and artist’s fingers brushing along his jaw hitting him with such nostalgia that he can barely breathe, homesick for a person and not a place. He lets stubble grow, and when he rubs his chin, his skin is rough.

His chest hair grows back. He gets into the habit of watching the plates move in his arm. It’s spring, and the flowers are growing back. He can tuck a few of them into his hair when he puts them up, and he feels almost pretty. The first time he looks in the mirror with his hair pulled back, a couple locks curling gently at his forehead and stubble just growing back, wearing a blue button down, he cries so hard he thinks his bones might break. He’s not used to feeling attractive. He is always cold, and he wears at least three layers at all times. T-shirt. Henley. Hoodie. Jacket. He will find warmth eventually, but not here, not with newspapers over the windows and a half empty bed. He wakes up to find himself reaching for a warm body that’s not there. He takes to sleeping with two pillows atop him, mimicking a long lost weight. 

He finds himself jumping at shadows again, but this time, his shadows are blonde haired blue eyed and beautiful. He’s not consciously avoiding him, though he knows he’s seeking him out. But he starts seeing floppy hair on every streetcorner, blue eyes set in everyone’s skull. He avoids mirrors for a little while, because his eyes are the same color but the wrong shade and sometimes he thinks that he sees his beloved’s baby blues in his reflection.

He writes. Living in a tiny apartment, sleeping in his soft bag and slowly munching his way through a lifetime supply of Twix, he writes everything down. He stole four notebooks from a yard sale three months and two days ago. He’s scribbled in them as he’s remembered, desperate to not forget. But now, he _writes._ There is poetry. A woman with red curls and bangs, a man with floppy hair and the most beautiful eyes he’d ever seen. Stories he’ll never tell aloud. Myths he read when he was a kid and forgot about. He writes as if putting down a pen would mean surrender, and that is one white flag he will never wave. He keeps a blue pen tucked into his bun at all times. It’s not the baby blue he wants, but it’s close enough. He invests in a backpack, and keeps it clipped across the front to secure it. He buys more notebooks. Ninety seven years of memories keep his hands occupied.

He learns how to work a microwave. He almost gets electrocuted when he buys a new charger. It’s a long story.

He learns that he likes to dream, when he has good dreams. He wakes up gasping and sobbing and vomiting and shaking more times than not, but sometimes there are memories or laughter or sunlight or all three. Those, he looks forward to. For the first time in seventy years, he wakes up with a smile on his face.

He eats and he cries and he laughs sometimes and he makes friends with the old couple that live next door that look at each other with such love that it hurts his chest and he buys clothes that he wants and he owns mint green skinny jeans because he can and he is not Bucky yet, but he is himself. 

And he looks up one day, doodling in a notebook with a light blue glitter pen because it was closer to the shade he wanted and he likes “accidentally” getting the ink on his fingers because then he can look at it for hours afterwards, and he sees that beautiful man that haunts his every moment. He thinks, briefly, that his heart may have stopped. The pretty art on the walls pales in comparison to him, and he thinks that he might love him even more than he loves the creamer leaf that tops his untouched cup of coffee. He is fifteen feet away from _home_ and he could go back to him, he could reach out and touch his shoulder and watch as his face registers surprise and then tears. Would Steve hug him immediately? Would he knock over his chair? 

There is snow in Steve’s hair. He wants to brush it off. His metal fingers twitch. He wants to go to him... but he doesn’t get the chance. 

He wakes up ten miles away on a gravel road on a stolen motorcycle, his backpack clutched in his arms. He’s smashed into a fence, and the cuts don’t hurt nearly as much as the knowledge that he was across the table from home. He screams until his throat hurts, and then his voice turns to heartbroken keens and then to soft sobs. He was close, so close... 

There is a woman with a headscarf that steps out of her greenhouse in the middle of nowhere. The fence was hers. She sees his state and promises that he won’t have to pay a dime. She asks his name. He wets his lips, and answers aloud with a voice that is soft and scratchy. “Bucky.” He says. “My name is Bucky.” 

She nods and brings him inside her home. She feeds him and gives him a thick blanket. He still has the blanket. He never learned her name. He thinks of her as Bubbe, despite her being the same age as he.

He avoids New York for as long as he can. He goes to DC, which he rationalizes as close enough. He gets a job, at a bakery that takes him despite the fact that he looks like he could kill a man. He isn't the only one there that looks like that, and so long as he doesn't have to speak to customers, he is fine. His coworkers are loud and boastful and he has a special place in his heart for each of these tattooed, burly men that take him in and hug him and sometimes harmonize. He gets really good at making icing flowers and it is peaceful. He goes back to the Air and Space museum, telling himself that he is going because he wants to see the planes and the shuttles. An hour in, he ends up before the feed of the two of them laughing together, and he just stands there. He stands there until an old security guard tells him that the museum is closed and that he needs to go home. He realizes, then, that his collar is soaked with tears. 

He can't stay away forever. 

New York doesn’t feel like too much of a surrender. But he avoids Brooklyn, he feels like visiting there would be too much. Everything is blurry about his past, as if he is looking through someone else's glasses. He isn't even entirely sure he is Bucky, much less anything else, he tells himself. He fell from a freight car and lost it all and he remembers that.

He steps off the plane, keeps his head down, and a woman with dark hair still rams into him. He takes a shortcut, his muscles remember this place even if he doesn't--and there are agents everywhere and they look terrified. 

And then, skidding in from the rainy street, a car blocks the exit and the Man on the Bridge, Steve Rogers, shining and golden and big and beautiful with a fragile and desperate hope in his familiar eyes steps out. 

He is across the alley from home and this time, he takes his hand and follows.


End file.
